Sports Night fic: Secret Side
Fandom: Sports Night
Pairing: Casey/Dan
Rating: PG
Note: A WiP since 2005, I've tried to tidy this up into something publishable for the 'Missing Scenes' challenge over at sportsnightglee. Post-episode Ten Wickets.
Secret Side
"What I don't understand," Casey says, trying to keep the snap out of his voice as he heaves Dan's arm around his neck and helps him up the steps to his building, "is how you got so drunk on half a bottle of wine." It had been good wine, too, the sort you save for celebrations and anniversaries. Shame to waste it on getting plastered - they could've sent out an intern to buy a bottle of cheap Zinfadel, if that was all they'd wanted it for, and saved the decent bottle for some happier time, sometime more fitting, but that was Dan, Dan who could never do anything by halves, Dan and his grand, romantic gestures.
It's tacitly understood, without a word being said (that's what makes it tacit) that it's Casey's job to make sure that Dan gets home safely. Of course it is. Poor, broken-hearted Danny. Never mind that he's known Rebecca for the grand total of not-quite-two months, so just how broken-hearted can he be, exactly? Never mind that Casey has his own problems which, you'll excuse him for saying so, are just a little more pressing, what with him being, actually, in love with Dana and her being about to marry the wrong man, which is not just to say a man who isn't Casey, but a man who's no good for her, who's already cheated on her, who's capable of god only knows what else, and who'll make her miserable. Never mind any of that. It's Dan who all eyes are on … on whom all eyes are. Whatever. It's Dan, drama-queen Dan, who's put himself and his woes front and centre, and it's Casey who's going to have to be the practical one, the reliable one, Casey with his feet planted squarely on the ground while Dan goes flying blithely in a dozen directions at once, tossed by one fickle breeze to another, Danny - and doesn't that speak volumes all by itself? Danny, like he's still in grade school, Danny who refuses to grow up, who can't accept responsibility, Danny who wouldn't know the real world if it came up and kicked sand in his face while he, Casey, he's managed a job and a home and a family for years now, and see what thanks he got for it, kicked out of his own house after ten years of giving them everything, everything, and now it's not even a year later and he's supposed to be over it?
What about Casey's pain, just once, just once in a very long while?
Okay, sure, Dan lost his brother. But that was a long time ago, and Casey's lost people too - all his grandparents died young, his cousin Anna overdosed at nineteen. Dan's alienated from his parents - who isn't?! - and he can't find anyone to love him. Well, tough. That's all very sad, but there are plenty worse off. Set against all of that the facts that Dan is young and healthy, good-looking and rich, and suddenly his life doesn’t look so bad. Does it?
Casey's had some wine himself, or he wouldn't be thinking this way. These are the dark thoughts that lie tucked away at the very back of his consciousness, held back by custom and discretion and (he would admit, on a better day) his own very real fondness for Dan, who, it's true, does bruise awfully easily and who takes a long, long time to recover, a little longer every time it happens. But Casey doesn't believe that hearts break, or, if they do, not more than once, and whereas he was resigned, that first time, back in college, to have Dan cling around his neck and not-quite-sob into his shoulder, once was enough. Dan needs to learn to suck it up.
But he hadn't said any of this out loud, knowing that it would sound bitchy and egocentric when the truth is that none of his feelings toward Dan are motivated by jealousy; not at all. He doesn't envy Dan the fact that he's younger and already as successful as Casey - if not as well paid; Casey's agent saw to that. If he sometimes suspects that their co-workers like Dan better than him, well, he certainly doesn't care, any more than he cares if Dan gets more fan mail than he does. And he most certainly doesn't envy the women that flit in and out of Dan's life and Dan's bed, bountiful and easy.
Envy Dan the women, that is. Not envy the women themselves.
As for Rebecca - if he doesn't mourn her departure overmuch, there's nothing more to that than his firm belief that she was never right for Dan, that if she'd stayed around she would have hurt him far, far more than she has done tonight. And who would have had to pick up the pieces then?
He can't say it out loud. Jeremy would only stare at him fish-eyed, while Natalie would glare and - Natalie is terribly fond of Dan, maybe a little too fond - exact revenge at some date sooner rather than later. Casey has had first-hand experience of Natalie's notions of vengeance, and would as soon avoid any kind of repetition.
So he'd kept his thoughts to himself, guided Dan into his coat, through the bullpen to the elevators, down to the parking lot and over to his car; held out his hand for the keys and, when Dan just flopped against the driver's door and looked at him blankly, had taken his life in his, well, hands, stuck that hand into Dan's pocket and rifled around in there until his fingers touched metal, trying his best not to touch anything else. He'd tried to disregard Dan's squirming, and what came dangerously close to a breathy giggle; managed entirely to disregard any inappropriate sensations the close proximity might have aroused in him. Not that there was anything to disregard. Of course not.
He'd taken Dan home, driving as slowly as he dared and as cautiously as Dan himself, the world's most careful driver, would have done. Somebody had to do it, and, somehow, at times like this, 'somebody' always seems to be him.
There have been a lot of times like this over the past ten years.
No. That makes Dan sound like some sort of hopeless wino-junkie-lush. Which isn't true. Not true at all, and grossly unfair. Casey has seen him this drunk before, but not often. And there was always a good reason.
From Dan's point of view, for that matter, there'd been a good reason tonight. In Casey's eyes … not so much. Rebecca was an accident waiting to happen, he'd known it all along. Said so; he'd tried to warn Dan, and Dan hadn't listened, hadn't wanted to listen. Better it end sooner, rather than later. It's like ripping the Band-Aid off a cut: do it quick, get it over with fast. It'll sting for a moment, but soon it'll be forgotten.
It's not just the brevity of the whole sorry affair. Casey is pretty convinced that Dan had willed himself to fall in love with Rebecca, if 'love' is what you'd call it; that it was more the idea of being in love than actual love itself; that he'd seen her, beautiful and vulnerable and bruised, and had been unable to resist playing the chance to be a hero in her eyes. He can't break his heart over this. Not even Danny could break his heart over this. He'll get drunk, he'll get clingy and emotional, he'll probably shed a few tears into his pillow, and then that'll be that: he'll wake up in the morning, she'll be as good as forgotten, and Dan will just get on with his life.
Stage one: accomplished. With a vengeance.
Dan finally lifts his head from Casey's shoulder, much to Casey's relief. It had felt disturbingly right, its weight, its warmth, the slight brush of Dan's short hair against the skin of Casey's neck, the fading scent of Dan's shampoo (lemongrass, whatever the hell that is; Casey's seen the bottle). And qualifying 'right' with 'disturbing' pretty much equals 'wrong'. Right?
Plus the doorman had given them a decidedly strange look as they'd passed him. Casey suspected he was going to have to run back down and give the man a massive tip to keep his mind at rest, and his mouth firmly shut.
"I didn’t," Dan says, though it comes out as simply 'Din't'. "Y'know that bottle of Scotch I keep in my desk drawer for 'mergencies?"
Actually, yes. What Dan doesn't know - at least, Casey thinks he doesn't know - is that that isn't the original bottle. Back when Casey was going through his divorce, it was emptied and replaced several times, on a semi-regular basis. It hasn't been entirely untouched in the intervening months.
"Uh-huh," is all he says, and then, "Well, I guess this qualifies as an emergency, yeah?" If only to Dan's hopelessly needy self-obsession.
"It really does," Dan says sadly, and his head flops back down against Casey again. Casey looks at the staircase - Dan's apartment is only on the third floor and, young and fit as they both are, ordinarily they'll walk up. In fact, some nights they'll race one another - looks back at Dan, who's more than half asleep on his feet, and presses the call button for the elevator. Then he registers what Dan had said, and a worrying thought strikes him.
"The whole bottle …?" Maybe they should've detoured via the ER. Because this day hasn't been perfect enough quite yet. Why not end it watching his co-anchor get his stomach pumped over some bubble-brained little bitch he doesn't even really care about to begin with?
"Only half-full," Dan mumbles, and somehow manages to lose his balance, even though he's standing still, and stumbles against Casey's side, sending Casey reeling in turn. He grabs the wall, and saves them both from crashing to the ground, manoeuvres them back upright and stable.
Half-full is still an awful lot of Scotch. Concern turns his voice brusque. "Oh, that’s real smart, Danny. You want tomorrow’s headlines to be ‘Sports Anchor Dead of Liver Failure at 29'?"
Dan sighs into his ear, warm, damp breath making Casey tingle. "You think I care?"
He probably doesn't, and that makes Casey angrier yet. "You'll be lucky if they remember you're a sports anchor. It might as well be 'Pitiful loser dead of liver failure'. I could sit right down and write it now."
Dan raises his head again, and twists his neck to look at him. "You think I’m a pitiful loser?"
His voice is tiny, lost and scared and, as always when his sharp tongue’s gone too far, Casey finds himself backpedalling. "No, no, of course I don’t."
"Then why did you say it?" Dan doesn't sound reassured.
"Because," Casey tells him, "that’s what people will think. They’ll think god, that’s sad, his girlfriend ditched him and it was what, like the end of the world for him? And then, you know, it really was the end of the world. And then they'll think, loser. That's how it goes, Danny."
"Yeah," Dan says, and tries to mount a comeback. "Because you did so well when Lisa dumped you …"
Well, he'd wanted some acknowledgement of his own problems, so he should have seen that coming. He may as well say what's on his mind. If Dan's hurt, well … well, too bad. The chances are that tomorrow he won't remember any of this, anyway. "We had ten years. You had a month. It's not exactly the same thing. And Rebecca - " He stops himself before he goes too far again.
"What?" Dan says sharply.
Casey carefully censors himself. Drunk or not, if Casey says what he really thinks about Rebecca, some part of Dan's going to remember and resent it. "She was never really yours to have, in any case. Being Mrs Steve Sisco, and all. I told you it would end badly." Oh, shit. He'd just said I told you so. Some friend he was turning out to be.
"Well," Dan says, and he sighs. "You are wise in the ways of women, Casey. Never let it be said that you are not. Wise."
He sounds a little more like himself now, only a little slurred and watery. Casey does his best to bounce back to him, to keep the conversation on their usual plane, the back-and-forth volley of words that leaves no space or time for sincerity or subtext. "In the ways of women?"
"And other things," Dan tells him. "Wise." He squints, and looks worried. "Both of you. Two wise men."
"Uh-huh," Casey says, noncommittally. "It's April, Dan. Wise men are out of season."
"They're never in season for me," Dan points out, with perfect fairness. "You can be Casper. He's friendly."
There's logic there. "Not the same Casper, I think you'll find," Casey tells him, and manoeuvres him out of the elevator, toward his doorway.
"Could be. He'd be dead. He could be a ghost."
"I guess," Casey admits, and juggles Dan's weight, which seems to have become considerably more solid and concentrated in the past few minutes, in order to have a hand free. "Keys?" He's not going back in Dan's pocket, not with Dan in this sort of mood.
Dan thinks about it. "Yes," he decides. "I have some."
Casey sighs, and casts up his eyes to the uncaring heavens. "God, Danny," he says, exasperated, "could you work with me a little here? Seriously, when you drink? You turn into the world's most annoying twelve-year-old."
A sly, secret smile lights Dan's face from within. "Yeah?" he asks, and his arm snakes around Casey's neck. Casey starts to answer, but suddenly Dan's mouth is on his, and all he says is, "Oh!" And then, for some moments, not even that.
There is a reason that those women, all those women, who come to Dan (come for Dan) so eagerly, why those women stay so short a time, why they leave him nursing what he fondly believes is a broken heart. There is a reason, too, for that smokescreen of verbiage. The reason is this: this part of Dan that Dan himself never acknowledges, that only emerges when he's as drunk as this, this part of him that means that he can never give himself wholly or honestly or truthfully. This secret side. The Dan that only Casey knows, only Casey sees, and that even Casey can't keep forever. But Dan's secret side is Casey's secret (one more burden, one more responsibility) and this one, this, he has to keep. For both their sakes.
He reaches up, eventually, wraps his hands around Dan's and pulls them away from himself, holds them down at Dan's side. "Your hands are cold," he says softly.
Dan smiles; his eyes are lucid, full of promise. "Warm them up for me, then?"
Casey lifts their joined hands, his right, Dan's left, drops a kiss against Dan's fingers. "Better?" he asks.
"Little bit," Dan says. He frees one hand and - at long last - drags out his keys, opens the door and tips them both over the threshold. "Stay with me?"
It's all questions, when he's like this, all questions and uncertainty that strike direct to Casey's heart, make him forget his anger, his resentment; at least, for now. "I'm not going anywhere," he says softly, and pulls Dan down to the couch alongside him, gathering him into his arms. "Hush," he says, as he might to Charlie, and lets Dan's head nestle against his chest, enfolds him close. Dan is asleep; has been on the verge of sleep for hours, has, quite possibly, been sleepwalking ever since they left the studio.
In the morning, he won't remember any of this. And that, Casey considers (but, this time, he laughs) - that is another way in which Dan is blessed.
He doesn't have to live with the knowledge of this half-life, this life unlived, this impossible possibility that exists on the twilight fringes of their existence. Maybe he dreams about it, maybe, just once in a while, he'll be aware of something just outside the bounds of his senses - but he doesn't know.
Casey does. Casey is aware of it every minute of every day, every agonising, frustrating, marvellous day he spends in close proximity to the man who is only the shadow of the man he could love.
Casey knows. And will keep the memory for the two of them. But the weight lies heavy on his heart, too heavy, sometimes, almost to bear. Is it any wonder if he fights against it, against Dan and everything he feels for him? There are days he'd do anything to forget.
But then … there are other days, other times.
He touches Danny's hair, feels his warmth against his chest, and smiles in the darkness.
There are times like now.
***
Pairing: Casey/Dan
Rating: PG
Note: A WiP since 2005, I've tried to tidy this up into something publishable for the 'Missing Scenes' challenge over at sportsnightglee. Post-episode Ten Wickets.
Secret Side
"What I don't understand," Casey says, trying to keep the snap out of his voice as he heaves Dan's arm around his neck and helps him up the steps to his building, "is how you got so drunk on half a bottle of wine." It had been good wine, too, the sort you save for celebrations and anniversaries. Shame to waste it on getting plastered - they could've sent out an intern to buy a bottle of cheap Zinfadel, if that was all they'd wanted it for, and saved the decent bottle for some happier time, sometime more fitting, but that was Dan, Dan who could never do anything by halves, Dan and his grand, romantic gestures.
It's tacitly understood, without a word being said (that's what makes it tacit) that it's Casey's job to make sure that Dan gets home safely. Of course it is. Poor, broken-hearted Danny. Never mind that he's known Rebecca for the grand total of not-quite-two months, so just how broken-hearted can he be, exactly? Never mind that Casey has his own problems which, you'll excuse him for saying so, are just a little more pressing, what with him being, actually, in love with Dana and her being about to marry the wrong man, which is not just to say a man who isn't Casey, but a man who's no good for her, who's already cheated on her, who's capable of god only knows what else, and who'll make her miserable. Never mind any of that. It's Dan who all eyes are on … on whom all eyes are. Whatever. It's Dan, drama-queen Dan, who's put himself and his woes front and centre, and it's Casey who's going to have to be the practical one, the reliable one, Casey with his feet planted squarely on the ground while Dan goes flying blithely in a dozen directions at once, tossed by one fickle breeze to another, Danny - and doesn't that speak volumes all by itself? Danny, like he's still in grade school, Danny who refuses to grow up, who can't accept responsibility, Danny who wouldn't know the real world if it came up and kicked sand in his face while he, Casey, he's managed a job and a home and a family for years now, and see what thanks he got for it, kicked out of his own house after ten years of giving them everything, everything, and now it's not even a year later and he's supposed to be over it?
What about Casey's pain, just once, just once in a very long while?
Okay, sure, Dan lost his brother. But that was a long time ago, and Casey's lost people too - all his grandparents died young, his cousin Anna overdosed at nineteen. Dan's alienated from his parents - who isn't?! - and he can't find anyone to love him. Well, tough. That's all very sad, but there are plenty worse off. Set against all of that the facts that Dan is young and healthy, good-looking and rich, and suddenly his life doesn’t look so bad. Does it?
Casey's had some wine himself, or he wouldn't be thinking this way. These are the dark thoughts that lie tucked away at the very back of his consciousness, held back by custom and discretion and (he would admit, on a better day) his own very real fondness for Dan, who, it's true, does bruise awfully easily and who takes a long, long time to recover, a little longer every time it happens. But Casey doesn't believe that hearts break, or, if they do, not more than once, and whereas he was resigned, that first time, back in college, to have Dan cling around his neck and not-quite-sob into his shoulder, once was enough. Dan needs to learn to suck it up.
But he hadn't said any of this out loud, knowing that it would sound bitchy and egocentric when the truth is that none of his feelings toward Dan are motivated by jealousy; not at all. He doesn't envy Dan the fact that he's younger and already as successful as Casey - if not as well paid; Casey's agent saw to that. If he sometimes suspects that their co-workers like Dan better than him, well, he certainly doesn't care, any more than he cares if Dan gets more fan mail than he does. And he most certainly doesn't envy the women that flit in and out of Dan's life and Dan's bed, bountiful and easy.
Envy Dan the women, that is. Not envy the women themselves.
As for Rebecca - if he doesn't mourn her departure overmuch, there's nothing more to that than his firm belief that she was never right for Dan, that if she'd stayed around she would have hurt him far, far more than she has done tonight. And who would have had to pick up the pieces then?
He can't say it out loud. Jeremy would only stare at him fish-eyed, while Natalie would glare and - Natalie is terribly fond of Dan, maybe a little too fond - exact revenge at some date sooner rather than later. Casey has had first-hand experience of Natalie's notions of vengeance, and would as soon avoid any kind of repetition.
So he'd kept his thoughts to himself, guided Dan into his coat, through the bullpen to the elevators, down to the parking lot and over to his car; held out his hand for the keys and, when Dan just flopped against the driver's door and looked at him blankly, had taken his life in his, well, hands, stuck that hand into Dan's pocket and rifled around in there until his fingers touched metal, trying his best not to touch anything else. He'd tried to disregard Dan's squirming, and what came dangerously close to a breathy giggle; managed entirely to disregard any inappropriate sensations the close proximity might have aroused in him. Not that there was anything to disregard. Of course not.
He'd taken Dan home, driving as slowly as he dared and as cautiously as Dan himself, the world's most careful driver, would have done. Somebody had to do it, and, somehow, at times like this, 'somebody' always seems to be him.
There have been a lot of times like this over the past ten years.
No. That makes Dan sound like some sort of hopeless wino-junkie-lush. Which isn't true. Not true at all, and grossly unfair. Casey has seen him this drunk before, but not often. And there was always a good reason.
From Dan's point of view, for that matter, there'd been a good reason tonight. In Casey's eyes … not so much. Rebecca was an accident waiting to happen, he'd known it all along. Said so; he'd tried to warn Dan, and Dan hadn't listened, hadn't wanted to listen. Better it end sooner, rather than later. It's like ripping the Band-Aid off a cut: do it quick, get it over with fast. It'll sting for a moment, but soon it'll be forgotten.
It's not just the brevity of the whole sorry affair. Casey is pretty convinced that Dan had willed himself to fall in love with Rebecca, if 'love' is what you'd call it; that it was more the idea of being in love than actual love itself; that he'd seen her, beautiful and vulnerable and bruised, and had been unable to resist playing the chance to be a hero in her eyes. He can't break his heart over this. Not even Danny could break his heart over this. He'll get drunk, he'll get clingy and emotional, he'll probably shed a few tears into his pillow, and then that'll be that: he'll wake up in the morning, she'll be as good as forgotten, and Dan will just get on with his life.
Stage one: accomplished. With a vengeance.
Dan finally lifts his head from Casey's shoulder, much to Casey's relief. It had felt disturbingly right, its weight, its warmth, the slight brush of Dan's short hair against the skin of Casey's neck, the fading scent of Dan's shampoo (lemongrass, whatever the hell that is; Casey's seen the bottle). And qualifying 'right' with 'disturbing' pretty much equals 'wrong'. Right?
Plus the doorman had given them a decidedly strange look as they'd passed him. Casey suspected he was going to have to run back down and give the man a massive tip to keep his mind at rest, and his mouth firmly shut.
"I didn’t," Dan says, though it comes out as simply 'Din't'. "Y'know that bottle of Scotch I keep in my desk drawer for 'mergencies?"
Actually, yes. What Dan doesn't know - at least, Casey thinks he doesn't know - is that that isn't the original bottle. Back when Casey was going through his divorce, it was emptied and replaced several times, on a semi-regular basis. It hasn't been entirely untouched in the intervening months.
"Uh-huh," is all he says, and then, "Well, I guess this qualifies as an emergency, yeah?" If only to Dan's hopelessly needy self-obsession.
"It really does," Dan says sadly, and his head flops back down against Casey again. Casey looks at the staircase - Dan's apartment is only on the third floor and, young and fit as they both are, ordinarily they'll walk up. In fact, some nights they'll race one another - looks back at Dan, who's more than half asleep on his feet, and presses the call button for the elevator. Then he registers what Dan had said, and a worrying thought strikes him.
"The whole bottle …?" Maybe they should've detoured via the ER. Because this day hasn't been perfect enough quite yet. Why not end it watching his co-anchor get his stomach pumped over some bubble-brained little bitch he doesn't even really care about to begin with?
"Only half-full," Dan mumbles, and somehow manages to lose his balance, even though he's standing still, and stumbles against Casey's side, sending Casey reeling in turn. He grabs the wall, and saves them both from crashing to the ground, manoeuvres them back upright and stable.
Half-full is still an awful lot of Scotch. Concern turns his voice brusque. "Oh, that’s real smart, Danny. You want tomorrow’s headlines to be ‘Sports Anchor Dead of Liver Failure at 29'?"
Dan sighs into his ear, warm, damp breath making Casey tingle. "You think I care?"
He probably doesn't, and that makes Casey angrier yet. "You'll be lucky if they remember you're a sports anchor. It might as well be 'Pitiful loser dead of liver failure'. I could sit right down and write it now."
Dan raises his head again, and twists his neck to look at him. "You think I’m a pitiful loser?"
His voice is tiny, lost and scared and, as always when his sharp tongue’s gone too far, Casey finds himself backpedalling. "No, no, of course I don’t."
"Then why did you say it?" Dan doesn't sound reassured.
"Because," Casey tells him, "that’s what people will think. They’ll think god, that’s sad, his girlfriend ditched him and it was what, like the end of the world for him? And then, you know, it really was the end of the world. And then they'll think, loser. That's how it goes, Danny."
"Yeah," Dan says, and tries to mount a comeback. "Because you did so well when Lisa dumped you …"
Well, he'd wanted some acknowledgement of his own problems, so he should have seen that coming. He may as well say what's on his mind. If Dan's hurt, well … well, too bad. The chances are that tomorrow he won't remember any of this, anyway. "We had ten years. You had a month. It's not exactly the same thing. And Rebecca - " He stops himself before he goes too far again.
"What?" Dan says sharply.
Casey carefully censors himself. Drunk or not, if Casey says what he really thinks about Rebecca, some part of Dan's going to remember and resent it. "She was never really yours to have, in any case. Being Mrs Steve Sisco, and all. I told you it would end badly." Oh, shit. He'd just said I told you so. Some friend he was turning out to be.
"Well," Dan says, and he sighs. "You are wise in the ways of women, Casey. Never let it be said that you are not. Wise."
He sounds a little more like himself now, only a little slurred and watery. Casey does his best to bounce back to him, to keep the conversation on their usual plane, the back-and-forth volley of words that leaves no space or time for sincerity or subtext. "In the ways of women?"
"And other things," Dan tells him. "Wise." He squints, and looks worried. "Both of you. Two wise men."
"Uh-huh," Casey says, noncommittally. "It's April, Dan. Wise men are out of season."
"They're never in season for me," Dan points out, with perfect fairness. "You can be Casper. He's friendly."
There's logic there. "Not the same Casper, I think you'll find," Casey tells him, and manoeuvres him out of the elevator, toward his doorway.
"Could be. He'd be dead. He could be a ghost."
"I guess," Casey admits, and juggles Dan's weight, which seems to have become considerably more solid and concentrated in the past few minutes, in order to have a hand free. "Keys?" He's not going back in Dan's pocket, not with Dan in this sort of mood.
Dan thinks about it. "Yes," he decides. "I have some."
Casey sighs, and casts up his eyes to the uncaring heavens. "God, Danny," he says, exasperated, "could you work with me a little here? Seriously, when you drink? You turn into the world's most annoying twelve-year-old."
A sly, secret smile lights Dan's face from within. "Yeah?" he asks, and his arm snakes around Casey's neck. Casey starts to answer, but suddenly Dan's mouth is on his, and all he says is, "Oh!" And then, for some moments, not even that.
There is a reason that those women, all those women, who come to Dan (come for Dan) so eagerly, why those women stay so short a time, why they leave him nursing what he fondly believes is a broken heart. There is a reason, too, for that smokescreen of verbiage. The reason is this: this part of Dan that Dan himself never acknowledges, that only emerges when he's as drunk as this, this part of him that means that he can never give himself wholly or honestly or truthfully. This secret side. The Dan that only Casey knows, only Casey sees, and that even Casey can't keep forever. But Dan's secret side is Casey's secret (one more burden, one more responsibility) and this one, this, he has to keep. For both their sakes.
He reaches up, eventually, wraps his hands around Dan's and pulls them away from himself, holds them down at Dan's side. "Your hands are cold," he says softly.
Dan smiles; his eyes are lucid, full of promise. "Warm them up for me, then?"
Casey lifts their joined hands, his right, Dan's left, drops a kiss against Dan's fingers. "Better?" he asks.
"Little bit," Dan says. He frees one hand and - at long last - drags out his keys, opens the door and tips them both over the threshold. "Stay with me?"
It's all questions, when he's like this, all questions and uncertainty that strike direct to Casey's heart, make him forget his anger, his resentment; at least, for now. "I'm not going anywhere," he says softly, and pulls Dan down to the couch alongside him, gathering him into his arms. "Hush," he says, as he might to Charlie, and lets Dan's head nestle against his chest, enfolds him close. Dan is asleep; has been on the verge of sleep for hours, has, quite possibly, been sleepwalking ever since they left the studio.
In the morning, he won't remember any of this. And that, Casey considers (but, this time, he laughs) - that is another way in which Dan is blessed.
He doesn't have to live with the knowledge of this half-life, this life unlived, this impossible possibility that exists on the twilight fringes of their existence. Maybe he dreams about it, maybe, just once in a while, he'll be aware of something just outside the bounds of his senses - but he doesn't know.
Casey does. Casey is aware of it every minute of every day, every agonising, frustrating, marvellous day he spends in close proximity to the man who is only the shadow of the man he could love.
Casey knows. And will keep the memory for the two of them. But the weight lies heavy on his heart, too heavy, sometimes, almost to bear. Is it any wonder if he fights against it, against Dan and everything he feels for him? There are days he'd do anything to forget.
But then … there are other days, other times.
He touches Danny's hair, feels his warmth against his chest, and smiles in the darkness.
There are times like now.
***